Jimmy Savile chants: English football's unspoken shame

Elland Road, Sunday, FA Cup fifth-round: Norwich City’s travelling support arrive early, take their place in the away enclosure and, before the teams have even walked out, strike up the song that has become a ritual of English football’s underbelly. “Jimmy Savile, he’s one of your own,” they chant. From the adjacent South Stand comes the familiar, grim reply: a lyric describing the serial predator committing a sexual assault. Parts of the ground boo; most simply let it wash over. The game begins. The pattern repeats.

Savile, who died in 2011 aged 84, was posthumously exposed as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders. A 2013 joint report by the Metropolitan Police and the NSPCC catalogued 214 confirmed offences, including 34 rapes, against 450 victims aged between five and 75. His abuse spanned 54 years and 28 hospitals, among them Leeds General Infirmary, a mile from Elland Road. Since the revelations, councils have stripped his name from buildings, his gravestone has been destroyed and his penthouse flat in Roundhay demolished. Yet inside English football grounds—most conspicuously at Leeds United matches—his name is still sung every weekend.

Savile had no connection to the club. He was born in Leeds, lived flamboyantly in the city and used sport—wrestling, marathon running—to court fame, but never displayed interest in the football team that shared his postcode during its 1970s pomp. “He was the antithesis of a team player,” says Dan Davies, who interviewed Savile repeatedly and chronicled attempts to unmask him. “If there are photos with Leeds players, it will only be because publicity interests aligned.”

The chants are not new. YouTube compilations date them back 15 years at Sheffield Wednesday, Bristol City, Middlesbrough and elsewhere. Yet frequency has spiked since Leeds returned to the Premier League after a 16-year absence. Visiting supporters, many of whom had never been to Elland Road for a league fixture, arrived determined to leave an impression. Some Leeds fans have responded by pre-empting the abuse, inventing baseless links to celebrity followers of rival clubs. The result is a call-and-response soundtrack that has become white noise inside the sport.

Current legislation offers no remedy. The Crown Prosecution Service’s 2023 guidance on “tragedy chanting” covers disasters such as Hillsborough or the Munich air crash, but excludes non-football-related abuse. The FA can charge clubs for fan behaviour only when participants can be identified as “participants in football”; individual prosecution is left to police. The UK Football Policing Unit sought advice on Savile chants and was told a specific case reviewed did not meet the threshold for a public-order offence. Both the UKFPU and CPS stress each incident is judged individually, leaving campaigners frustrated.

Leeds United broke their public silence on 6 March, slipping a line into a Ramadan-equality statement condemning “the sickening Jimmy Savile taunts our own supporters are subjected to at every match”. The club now wants stronger action. “We have lobbied and would be fully supportive of Jimmy Savile chants being classed as tragedy chanting and a hate crime,” a spokesperson told The Athletic. “These chants are a disgrace to the victims.”

Katie Russell, co-founder of Support After Rape and Sexual Violence Leeds, backs the stance. “Survivors hear these songs and feel re-victimised,” she says. “Football has to decide whether it wants to be a place where that is tolerated.”

Inside Elland Road, season-ticket holder Katie Watkin struggles to reconcile love for her club with the “despair” of hearing abuse echo around the ground her late father first brought her to as a child. “Because Savile never faced justice, and because the rumours were always there, people act as if it’s fair game,” she says. “It isn’t.”

Mick Ward, of Leeds United’s Marching Out Together supporters’ group, believes the antiquated, concrete-and-barbed-wire aesthetic of Elland Road plays a part. “Away fans see a proper old ground and think they can behave like it’s the 1980s,” he says. “But this isn’t about nostalgia; it’s about normalising abuse.”

Until legislation catches up, the only sanction available is social. Norwich supporters who began the latest chorus left Leeds with no reprimand. The FA has no record of disciplinary action against any club for Savile-related chanting. The songs remain, as Ward puts it, “the game’s unspoken shame”—heard every fortnight, condemned in private, rarely challenged in public.

Elland Road’s redevelopment plans, approved in January, will modernise the stadium and raise capacity to 53,000. Supporters hope the overhaul will usher in a new era on the pitch. Unless governing bodies act, the same old chants will be waiting when the turnstiles open.

Keywords: